How to Help People Suffering From Eating Disorders

I was reading this post called “5 Reasons Bulimia Is a Bad Idea”  on Leigh Peele’s website, when I encountered this comment:

“I can speak from personal experiance on the lack of knowledge treatment facilities have. I was dealing with this issue for over 3 years and everyone told me to learn to accept my body but what I needed to do was learn to accept the correct way to use nutrition. That was never discussed. Thankfully through people like you and others I have learned what food does and does not do for the body and weight loss. That did more for me than therapy every did.”

That made me think about bulimia, anorexia and eating disorders as a whole. You know that in my family there were two people suffering from anorexia, so I am really familiar with the way eating disorders start, the way people behave, their fears and food issues. People suffering from eating disorders consider food to be their enemy number one. So when trying to help somebody recover from disordered eating, you should help her make things up between her and the enemy, i.e. the person suffering from eating disorder and food.

If you think that food makes you fat, no matter if you learn to accept your body, that wouldn’t help you deal with your issues. Acceptance is not equal satisfaction. A person might accept his disadvantages, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t want to change them.

So what does that mean? That probably most of the recovery programs for people suffering from eating disorders, are aiming at the wrong place. Instead of trying to convince people to accept themselves, it might be better to convince them that food is not an enemy!

Food itself is not dangerous.

Food itself is not the reason for people being overweight.

Food itself can’t make you skinny or fat.

Food itself isn’t and shouldn’t be a problem.

Our attitude towards food is the problem.

Our overindulgence with food makes us sick and fat.

Wrong eating patterns make us fat.

Lack of knowledge about nutrition makes us fat.

That means that wrong attitude towards food and lack of knowledge about food are the main reasons for people being overweight.

So if you are trying to help a person erase the negative thoughts about his body image, you should help him understand that food is not his enemy. You should help him understand that correlation, doesn’t mean causation. You should teach him, how to use food in his favor. You should teach them to accept food as being an important fuel for our bodies and their proper functioning. You should teach him how to use food, to achieve desired body weight and body composition goals.

Have you ever thought why so many girls suffering from eating disorders who go through a recovery programs, achieve some success, and then later on when they go back to their normal environment, they end up with the same bad eating patterns, go back to the old struggles and never really recover? Because, throughout the recovery program they teach you to accept yourself, but they don’t teach you how to be the master of your life. They don’t teach you how you could achieve your goals, without destroying your body and yourself. Can you imagine how much better it would be, if they taught these girls how they could eat healthy and still look and feel great? Probably they’d go back home, feeling confident that they have “the weapon”( the right knowledge about food), to rule their own lives and never be slaves of destructive thoughts, born out of ignorance and feelings of incapacity!

Wouldn’t it be better if they thought these girls that you could look like this, by eating clean and healthy, and feeling awesome:

Instead of starving yourself, beating yourself up and  feeling weak,depressed and unsatisfied and looking like this:

Eat Clen. Train Smart. Stay Awesome!

P.S. If you liked this post, please share it with your friends. I’d greatly appreciate it! 🙂